Smart pricing

You wouldn't think that if you were an Adwords advertiser. In the long run, smart-pricing will keep Adsense and CPC around longer. Advertisers won't have to overpay for junk clicks that don't convert, thus they'll have the budget to spread their advertising dollars across more sites, encouraging them not to pull their advertising completely. Yup, as a publisher, it sucks to get 2-cent clicks, but you have to look at this as a long-term partnership, not a "What did I make yesterday and today?" kind of deal.

 

Long term, Google is risking losing publishers. I have completely clean, white-hat, legitimate, unique content sites. Google (or anyone) should have no complaints about my sites. The fact that AdSense is being so blunt is registering very deeply, and I will have no qualms moving to another program.

I'm already experimenting. Can't wait to tell Google to do something nasty to itself.

 

Smart pricing is logical. Anyone who advertises knows that not all adverts are equal. You can run the same ad in two different nwspapers, and get different results (I come from a sales and marketing/publishing background) WHY should you pay the same to be in both papers?

If you moniter your advertising, then you will know where your BUYERS are coming from. Online if you track referrals, then you know where your traffic is coming from, and you can further track which referrals are converting. Can anyone honestly tell me that they would pay the same price to two sites when one sites traffic converts at half the rate? That advert is worth exactly half ot the other, and as such, the value you should place on it is half that of the other. This is exactly what smart pricing does. The BAD thing about it is that google somehow appears to guess a lot of the time.

 

Well stated OWG.

Ian

 

I agree it's obviously frustrating as I have sites that are affected where I have seen a drop in revenue. However I also have an ecommerce site and I can tell you that it's even more frustrating to pay for advertising only to get a lot of clicks that don't convert and watch your ad budget go up with no return. In order for this type of advertising to work it needs to be successful for all of us.

Ian

 

Ian, I hear you and I agree with your argument. But with AdSene, the publishers have no hand in targeting, and we certainly don't have any hand in the conversion on other sites. To me, Google is penalizing the publishers for not targeting the ads properly.

The other thing that's annoying is that smart pricing is account-based instead of website- or page-based. I run AdSense on all of my sites, and if a few pages or a whole site are not converting for the advertisers, why penalize the whole account?

What the AdSense team is SORELY failing to provide is transparency. All the above arguments talk in plural ("In order for this type of advertising to work it needs to be successful for all of us."), and that "us" includes the publishers. If Google helps the publishers avoid smart pricing - heck, tell us exactly what it is! - you might all live more happily.

 

I understand what you're saying, and as I said I also have sites that are down 70% from what they were earning. So I understand your frustration.

Here's something to keep in mind, so bear with me on this. Imagine that I have a site that converts 3% of my own visitors. This means that for whatever reason I am attracting a good targeted audience. Now I want to grow my business, and I begin advertising on different sites. I've looked, and I've come accross two sites that are extremely well done and look like they are attracting people who would be interested in my products.

So I take the time to advertise on both. Site 1 converts extremely well, showing me strong ROI so I'm very happy. However, Site 2 is sending me double the amount of traffic, but for whatever reason the sales they bring are minimal. It's professionally done, and you would think it would have performed as well if not better than Site 1. Needless to say I stay with Site 1 as if I stay with Site 2 I'm losing money.

This is the theory that Google obviously considers and built Smart Pricing around. So while it stinks for those of us who do have sites that we try to monetize, we have to adjust our sites to attract more targeted users. I'm on both sides of this, your side and as someone who pays to advertise. We all need to work to understand this aspect better in order to be more successful.

Ian

 

One area I do wish they would work on would be a cookie-based idea. The idea is based on hopefully increasing our conversions on this basis: A visitor visited their site by clicking on an ad displayed on our site. They liked the products, and it made them interested in their store and site. Maybe they didn't buy that day, but maybe they go back in two weeks and purchase the product they found as a result of seeing the ad on our site. I run an affiliate program that is managed through ShareASale.com and see plenty of purchases that took place two weeks or more from the time they initially clicked the text ad that the associate put on their site. I'd also like to see this as an advertiser, as if it made my cost per conversion go up I'd probably be more inclined to spend more on advertising if my ROI increased. I'm guessing I have a few customers that found our store on Adwords, but might not have initially made a purchase until a couple of weeks later.

Ian

 

I would be expecting that if Google is "guessing" a lot of the time, it should still somehow correct itself over time. My guess is that to estimate correctly requires data over a period of time. So if that's true, then I wouldn't worry too much about smart pricing and would give it more time.

 

I currently have 3 with a few more soon hopefully, will be releasing my 4th within a week

 

You know that you can always leave Adsense, right? Just wondering.

 

ekstreme,

I must ask this question. How much did it cost you to sign up with Adsense? No need to answer!

 

I help you out

"Zero"

 

Who says I'm not gonna? I'm looking at the ones that work out the same/better. At the end of the day, the bills need to be paid.

I'm just pointing out the stupid side of the system: it's all in Google's hands and the publishers are getting penalized. If Google gave us tools/help in avoiding and fixing smart pricing, I wouldn't grumble. In that case, it'll be all my fault, and I will not complain. Think of it as customer feedback

 

Well ... I have the opposite experience. The last 5 - 6 weeks I earn MORE! per ad. just the CTR are the same, the pageviewes are the same, but ... my earnings has increased with about 50%

I have a well targeted site, ads showing from AdSense is perfect and match the page-content. My site has just basic SEO-techniques used ... and, it was after that the earnings started to take off, getting payed more per click than before.

So, there are always 2 sides of the coin

cya,
/PatrikB

 

Im glad to hear that, i haven't expierienced any change in CPC recently, although i am getting more visitors, thus more earnings, but im just waiting on smart pricing kicking in and putting me down to 25 cents a day or something lol

 

Oh, I'm sure you'll find something else to complain about.

 

True, the whining and cynicism do add texture to life

But seriously, I've been with AdSense for years, and never had anything but praise for them. Now all of a sudden, earnings drop for no apparent reason, and with no way for me to figure out why and how, and move to fix it. Disgruntled? Definitely. Did I come across as whining? Perhaps (well... probably!)

Thing is, the hardest hits come from the things you like most. Add in the fact it has to do with money and I'm left helpless, then you bet I will complain.

Just my 2 cents.

 

This is only speculation I believe. Did you read it off of jensense's page? While I'm not trying to say her sources are incorrect, but I unless I read it off of google's blog, then it's only speculation at the moment.

But that is very crappy if it's true. That doesn't make sense at all for me.

Smart pricing, like what Old Welsh Guy was saying is only natural and effective. You can't complain, even if 50%-100% of the traffic you get isn't your fault.

 

This isn't entirely true. You can do a lot to control the demographic of your visitors, by building a site that will appeal more to one group than another.

Another thing that's under your control is the way you write about products and services that may come up as Adsense ads. "These widgets suck" or "Why holidays are a waste of time" type articles are obvious candidates for poorly-converting Adsense. But most likely it's more subtle than that. Try to put yourself in the place of a visitor, and ask yourself how much you would trust your own recommendations.